Market ward Fix/ Idea

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Hello, I Would like to introduce my self first. I'm as name posted Kilta. I was a Long time ffxi player of garuda/ lakshmi. I bought but have yet been able to play ffxiv. But I do support it and do have a hopefully good idea.

My idea is a fix to revamp the market wards. Instead of small mog house room. I suggest a large scale open air market zone. One for each city. Instead of just putting a retainer out, have an actual stall that players can dress up. Obviousely keep the searches. But with the stalls have icons on or a sign. One for armor, one for weapons, one for food, one for materials, and a misc icon.

The zones also sould be grid locked in a sence that you place you retainer stall in a pre programed spot. Each zone if large enough support about 2000 stalls. Make it similar to say South San O'drea, just a bit larger. This will allow room to walk around, and players will spend less time running all over going to the different rooms. When i first heard of market wards this idea came to mind.

[Nephera]

I do think market wards could be a little bigger and have a little more character. But i imagine finding the retainer you want in a giant sprawling 2000 stall zone would actually be harder than the current system.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Not in a premade grid format. think a supermarket not random plops I see in vids. Pretty much we would have 3 or more rows of stalls and have the star obviousely I was also thinking of a teleport like function to those who need it quick. You click the retain and have an option to teleport to said retain. As that spot will be links to an ID number via coding.
I dislike hpw wards are just a sprealing mess of randomly put npcs. I much rather have it in neat rows or in blocked sections about 4 stalls per block. Kind of likw how the mog houses in ffxi was set up. You had squares to neatly put items. 2000 was also a random number, since it will be one area per city. two things I dislike about the wards from what pictures I've seen are
1 they are dark rooms
2 they look messy with all the random pc/npc around.

I like the idea of the wards coming from ffxi. I hated walking around laggy jeuno due to all the afk bazaar ppl. then the laggy/messy rollen mart. Or where ever it was on other servers

[Nephera]

Alright fair enough, something does need to be done to clean up the market wards.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

here is in a way how my idea works.

. = retainer

instead of
. . ..
. .

... .. ....

it will be more like

. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
> = stared retainer
. . . . . . . . . > . .
. . .> . . . . . . . .
. . . . > . . . . . .

I hope that helps kind of.
It my idea comes from an anime called spice and wolf. The cities had a market district that was an open air. And was set up in neat rows and in the middle 8 shops in a 4 block pattern.

See each retainer stall will be palced in a neat line not a random location.
All you do is pick a block to put them in. And just pick the icon that your selling aolong with the stars from searches. getting to said retainer will be easier instead of sitting in the middle of a room waiting for a messy retainer load up.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

to add there will be enoygh space between the stalls to walk around them. Or even better. Have a open air market woth pre places stalls and you just select a stall dress it up with items and a sign of what your selling (said icons I mentioned.) Also another reason This idea can works is mabinogi did this with open residental areas. They had pre made housing blocks you just had to pick a house. And most used them as player shops.

Just make sure the zone can hold enough stalls for the players to use them. Instead of having small dark rooms. and runing around everywhere just to locate your items. All you would be doing is running to a easy to get to stall with hopefuly easy loading. Or even teleport to said retainer.

[Ark_mage2]

This was similar to my vision for the Market Ward. I could see SE working their way up from the current system to a system like the one you describe. Start by adding more Retainer animations, then slowly consolidating and expanding the wards into a fewer bigger wards. Maybe giving players who become bigger sellers or who complete a certain quest the ability to run a stand etc.

[Jedgar]

Large one zone Market Wards is something hearkened to old EQ days. And I for one hated having to search through thousands of players selling their crap to find what I was searching for. When they finally introduced their search feature and the "Golden Trail" is was still a pain as you had to run through the entire zone to get to the one person who you selected to buy your item. And god forbid that it didn't get purchased before you got there otherwise you got to do the whole thing over again.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Was eq messy or neat?

I also made mention of a teleport to said retainer.

But even still isn't that a problem anyway? I know ffxi AH's had that issue.

I think no matter what there will be a competition for items. Thays how things are. I just want to see a neater set up, and a less claustrophobic zone.

Talking immersion, but a dark box with random npc standing in random spots in some cases on top of each other is immersion breaking.
Neatly set up rows of stalls in an open air zone is more immersive. In my eyes. And again adding a teleport feature will get you to that retain as the teleport is linked to the spot.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Pretty much what is faster...
running through one zone?
or going from ward one ward to another? as most ppl don't sell in the correct wards anyway (as from what i'm told) like say you go to the ward for food do a search for a meat dish turns out the cheapest retainer is selling 5 in a ward far from ya. Now you gotta run to said ward. enter it then wait for load and find your retainer. and in that time all five were baught from someone looking for a different item and saw those.